


Recording Session

by hgleiser



Series: Wrong Direction [5]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, M/M, Matchmaking, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6621481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hgleiser/pseuds/hgleiser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The course of true love ne'er did run smooth...though it goes more smoothly than a dinner reservation set up by Wrong Direction for Mark and Fernando.  Rated teen for swearing and achingly bad puns.</p><p>Top step of the podium to L. and K. for the beta!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recording Session

"Okay, Kimi, which kind do you want?" Sebastian checked his watch and looked increasingly impatient. "Make it quick if you don't mind, we've got to get to the restaurant before Mark and Fernando."

Kimi, still surveying the dozen flavors of ice cream available from the truck parked near Central Park, didn't turn around. "Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing."

"Kimi, we've got twenty minutes to get two streets over and into position..."

"Okay, okay, hold on." Kimi pointed to the containers of chocolate and vanilla, purposefully ignoring Sebastian's incredulous expression. "One scoop of each, please."

"We stood here all this time and you got the most basic choices. Why am I not surprised?"

"What? Sometimes strawberry is good. Tutti fruitti if I get bored." Kimi rummaged in his jeans pockets for exact change. "None of that vanilla chocolate caramel brownie shit."

"It's _not_ shit. You don't know what you're missing." As much as he knew Kimi's insults were his way of being friendly or simply winding him up for his own amusement, Sebastian had yet to be able to resist taking the bait to defend himself. "But I do. Delicious ice cream."

Kimi handed the vendor the change and a few crumpled dollars in exchange for a waffle cone piled high with what Sebastian was certain was more than two scoops then took a long lick of chocolate. "What are you upset for? Is more for you and Jenson."

"What...how...no one knows about that!" Sebastian spluttered and began walking quickly toward the nearest intersection.

Trailing a few feet behind him, Kimi licked off drops of melted vanilla from around the edge of the cone and smiled. "I woke up for a glass of water and there you were. Cake and ice cream."

Sebastian stared at his shoes, feeling a blush spread over his face and down his neck as he recalled perching on the edge of the kitchen counter next to Jenson with a sizeable slice of chocolate cake, a pint of Ben and Jerry's Blondie Brownie, and two spoons between them. "Yes...that was us. Promise you won't tell anyone we missed rehearsal the next day because we stayed up and ate ourselves sick!"

"You didn't get up to anything else? No drinking, no...you know?" Kimi's eyes were alight as he took a bite of chocolate but suddenly shut when he felt a sharp pain around his forehead. "Ow. What the hell do you call that?!"

"Brain freeze. And what do you take me for? Jenson and I are friends. Nothing else. Neither of us could sleep and I asked if he would share his cake if I shared my ice cream. It was nice. We don't get much of a chance to sit and talk when there's so much work going on."

Kimi shrugged. "Wondered if you'd give me an answer. And..." He took another bite of ice cream then used his tongue to swipe the excess off the corner of his mouth. "This is not bad. You should have gotten some."

"I'd have gotten cookie dough but I didn't want to spoil my appetite." Sebastian looked over his shoulder, waiting for Kimi to catch up with him before stepping off the curb and into the crowd crossing in the opposite direction.

"You'll have some later for sure," mumbled Kimi. "You're a shit liar both ways, Seb."

Sebastian didn't give any indication--not wanting to give himself away in public, much less in New York City where he was well aware there could be paparazzi everywhere except for perhaps the bathroom--but he'd heard him loud and clear.  _In my defense,_ he thought,  _it's not as if I meant to sit on the counter at two in the morning. Things happen. Things that are called Jenson Button with no shirt on who smile at you and ask for your company. Obviously it would have been rude to say no._

 

_***_

It had begun innocently enough, anyway. He'd gone downstairs to adjust the thermostat, having already tossed the sheets off his bed in frustration at being too sweaty to sleep, and had heard a soft voice he'd recognized as Jenson's calling from the kitchen.

"Who is it? You didn't break in, did you?"

"It's me, Sebastian," he'd called back while fiddling with the controls to turn the air conditioning on. "Does it feel hot in here or..."

Jenson had leaned foward from his place on the counter, letting his gaze travel slowly up and down Sebastian's bare torso before speaking. "Or is it just you?"

_It's definitely just you,_ he thought,  _unless you count how bloody much I'm probably red-faced from staring at your arse. And here I was thinking Nico had the nicest one._

Sebastian had gone to stand in the kitchen entryway and rolled his eyes. "Thank you, but you must have me confused with some other blonde German. You might have seen him around. My height, green eyes, impossibly pretty..."

"Rings a bell, Seb, but he's not the one I'm looking at, is he?"

Sebastian instantly felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up accompanied by the urge to turn away, run back to his room, and forget they'd ever begun that conversation.  _What do you want from me?_ he heard a trembling voice in the back of his mind asking.  _What do you see in me? I don't like to look at myself. Why would you?_ He thought back to the first time he'd laid eyes on Jenson in the studio where he'd auditioned, the way that he never seemed to look at him without a smile crinkling his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth, and while casting his memory back further realized that Jenson had been the first to do so with what Sebastian hoped was more than friendliness.  _Not that anyone gets it right the first time. Not in recording an album, not in love as much as they'd like to, but you have to keep trying and hope you get lucky somehow without expecting it._

He glanced around and lowered his head, speaking to the hardwood floor more than to Jenson. "No...there doesn't seem to be anyone else unless those stories Fernando used to tell us about this house being haunted are true. Maybe we've got a ghost who likes cake."  _When in doubt,_ he reminded himself, _make a bad joke. When nervous in front of your crush, make a very bad joke._

"I haven't thought about that in ages!" Jenson laughed and picked up the spoon lying on the plate next to him then took a bite of the biggest slice of devil's food cake with chocolate icing Sebastian thought he had ever seen. "Mmmm. Excellent. Who supposedly haunts us again?"

"The ghost of Ayrton Senna, the racing driver who was killed in Italy when we were kids. According to Fernando, he planned to move in here once he retired but never made it back. He used to tell us if we didn't do everything he and Mark said that Ayrton would play pranks on us like he used to do to another driver. Not that I believe him, but...you don't think there  _is_ a ghost, do you?" 

Jenson licked the last traces of icing from his spoon. "Nope. We're safe. Are you afraid of them?"

Sebastian put on a defiant expression, arms crossed over his chest. "No. Are you?"

"Of course not. Besides, if there  _were_ we've got Nico and Lewis. They've probably seen  _Ghostbusters_ a hundred times by now, they'd know their way around a proton pack and probably revel in the chance to look cool. You know what they're like."

"Not my style, for one. I'm so used to walking through mud from being a photographer that I'm not sure what clean white trainers look like anymore."

Jenson took a long look at Sebastian's pajama pants, avoiding the barely exposed curve of his hips lest he get stuck staring at it, and gave him a look of mock disdain. "Those are  _so_ last year, Seb."

"And soon they'll be so two years ago if I gave a shit." Sebastian grinned as he looked up at the clock. "What brings you down here at this hour?"

"Oh, I couldn't sleep. Kept having strange dreams about the world's supply of cake being gone." Jenson took another bite. "I thought it would be a good idea to make sure that hadn't happened. Care to join me?"

"Now you've made me get a sweet tooth." Sebastian walked over to the freezer and pulled out a pint of ice cream marked with his initials on the lid in permanent marker. "I'll share if you're willing to do the same."

Jenson patted the kitchen counter. "Sure. Grab yourself a spoon and a seat."

Sebastian had done just that, passing the plate and the pint back and forth with him until both were empty and their stomachs gurgled and ached with far too much of a good thing at one time.

"Oh my word," Jenson had groaned. "I felt satisfied for a minute and now I feel sick."

"Ugghh, me too. What have we done?" Sebastian put the dirty plate and spoons in the sink, clutching his stomach as a wave of nausea hit him. "We can't tell Mark or Fernando either, they'll be furious if they find out."

"Not to worry," Jenson had assured him and slid off the counter, "if anyone asks we had a stomach bug. It certainly feels like one!"

With that plan in mind they'd said their goodnights, Sebastian feeling his skin tingle at the brush of Jenson's fingertips over his bare shoulder, and had trudged back to bed feeling relatively safe they wouldn't be found out.  _Never has feeling this bad,_ he thought while he laid in bed waiting for his aching stomach to settle itself,  _been this worth it._

 

***

 

"You still haven't promised to keep quiet," Sebastian reminded Kimi as they hurried onto the sidewalk seconds before the light turned green to allow a wave of oncoming traffic through."

"I'm weighing my options." Kimi finished off a few bites of waffle cone purely to annoy Sebastian before continuing. "What's in it for me?"

"More ice cream?" ventured Sebastian. "More booze?"

"Something better. When you get married, I'm best man and organizing your bachelor party."

"Kimi, I'm not getting married anytime soon."

"Who said it was soon? Things with Jenson will take time, you know?"

"Not if he doesn't know how I feel," muttered Sebastian to himself.

"For fuck's sake, Seb, I can hear your dramatic bullshit. Tell him."

"If I promise to tell him after this thing with Mark and Fernando is over, will you keep quiet? And in the event that pigs fly over London, Paris, and Berlin and I get engaged to Jenson, you'll be the best man and you can handle my bachelor party. Deal?"

Kimi took another bite and shook the hand Sebastian offered him. "Deal."

"Good." Sebastian paused to check the piece of paper with the map to the restaurant Jenson had given him. "Just a few blocks more."

Meanwhile, outside the restaurant, Lewis, Nico, and Jenson were getting bored enough with waiting for them to make more mischief than usual in a group of nearby trees.

"Five...four...three..." counted Nico aloud, who stood with his back against a trunk just wide enough to completely conceal himself. "Two..."

"If we can hear you, we can find you!" yelled Jenson as he ducked under a low branch with Lewis at his side. "You're missing the point of hide and seek!"

"So are you if you're sneaking around before I've finished counting," Nico replied. "I heard rustling branches."

"I  _told_ you he's a ninja," Lewis hissed. "I swear he can hear us breathing."

"We'll stay right here and you can start over, Nico. Cross my heart."

Nico's annoyed sigh was as audible as his counting had been. "One hundred...ninety-nine...ninety-eight...ninety-seven..." he whispered.

"Are we still going to sneak up on him, JB?"

Jenson nodded and began tiptoeing towards where he thought Nico was with Lewis following closely behind.

"Man, I hear footsteps behind me," whispered Lewis. "A pair of them."

"As long as it's not Nico," whispered Jenson, "we're safe."

"I haven't played hide and seek in forever," Sebastian interjected, moving a branch out of the way to avoid being hit in the face and holding it so Kimi would avoid the same as they crept along. "Where do you think he is?"

"Shhhh!" Kimi punched Sebastian in the arm. "You idiot, you gave us away."

Sebastian pouted, which Jenson couldn't stop himself from finding ridiculously cute. "He wasn't done counting yet."

Nico groaned and appeared from behind the tree. "Enough. We're going to be late if we keep this up anyway."

"Found him," Sebastian murmured, getting another punch from Kimi in return.

"Gentlemen," said Jenson, "our mission begins now. Everyone got everything they need?"

Sebastian gestured to the backpack he wore which contained his camera and a large lens, Lewis and Nico held up their phones, and Kimi pulled out a roll of bills to effectively convince the maitre'd to go along with them.

Jenson adjusted his sunglasses and grinned. "The name's Button. Jenson Button."

After much teasing and Sebastian declaring himself to be Q, which no one argued with(least of all Jenson), they sent Kimi inside to rent a rowboat to use in the lake over which one side of the restaurant extended and pay for the best champagne on offer for Mark and Fernando. When he returned with a highly uncharacteristic grin on his face, Sebastian retrieved his camera and took a picture. 

"Seb, what the hell?"

"Might be the first and last time we see it. Now that I think about it, what's got you smiling so much?"

Kimi shrugged and patted his pocket. "She wants me to call her later."

"I can't believe you got a woman's number that quickly!" Lewis doubled over with laughter. "Show us the proof."

Kimi gave him a look that Sebastian instantly recognized as a Finnish death glare. "No. We have work to do."

 

***

"Reservation for Hamilton, I think," Mark said as he and Fernando approached the maitre'd.

She ran one perfectly French manicured finger down the list on her clipboard then looked up, skepticism in her eyes and a tinge of disdain in her voice. "There's no one here by that name."

"Er...Rosberg?" Fernando asked. "We have five friends who were supposed to meet us here at seven."

"Are you sure it was under one of their names?"

"Si," he replied.

Her brow furrowed and she pushed her glasses back on her nose. "Might it be one of your names, then? I really don't have time for this, I  _do_ have guests to attend to."

"Webber," said Mark, ignoring the stares from the queue behind he and Fernando.

"Alonso," Fernando added.

Her expression suddenly changed to one of relief. "Ah! Here it is. Reservation for two, Webber."

"Two?" Fernando looked up at Mark. "You do this?"

"No." Mark peered at the list and quickly found his name with "two, 7pm" written in the column beside it. "It should be seven. Our friends were going to..."

She flipped the page over and consulted a seating chart. "We're fully booked, Mr. Webber. The only space I have is for two. I'm terribly sorry, but there's nothing I can do."

Fernando's hand clasped Mark's as he looked up at him with shining eyes. "Gracias. You and the guys make me think we are all going together and then you do this. Is a good coverup."

"Fonz, I didn't. We've been set up. Not that I wouldn't, of course..."

Fernando smiled. "We go and enjoy it, yes?"

_Well, I wasn't planning on getting to the romantic dinner date this soon,_ thought Mark,  _but he's right. We're here, it's a beautiful evening, and it'd be a bloody shame to waste it elsewhere. Maybe he'll understand once I find out who's behind this. Maybe we both will._

"Of course." Mark squeezed Fernando's hand and smiled at the maitre'd. "We'll take it."

"Excellent. Right this way, gentlemen." She turned and led them through the maze of tables to one in the corner overlooking the west side of the lake. "Enjoy your evening."

"Thank you."

"Gracias."

_I suppose those acting courses I took for fun literally paid off,_ thought the maitre'd as she walked back to the front of the restaurant with a knowing smile on her lips and the bribe/champagne money still tucked in her pocket.  _And from a cute guy with an accent. Swoon. Well done, Suzi, well done._

 

_***_

 

"Seb? Can you see anything?" Jenson looked through a small pair of binoculars, failing to see more than a blur that vaguely resembled Mark and Fernando, and sighed in frustration. "These aren't powerful enough."

"Crystal clear." Sebastian gripped the underside of the lens with one hand to steady it against the slow bobbing of the rowboat. "They've got as good of a view as us."

"Are they doing anything interesting?" asked Nico, who was being photobombed by Lewis sticking his tongue out while trying to find the best angle for his latest selfie. "I can see you. Stop that."

"You know you love me." Lewis grinned then reached forward and tapped the screen. "Awww, look at us."

Nico nudged him away, hiding the screen with one hand as he tagged it #yougottalovethisguy and tried to maintain annoyance he knew he didn't feel.  _This is what it's like to be in too deep, isn't it?_ he thought.  _That closer that one special person gets, the more you wonder if you'll drown. Part of you wants to come up for air but it's easier to surrender. The problem is that the more you fight the current, the further it drags you down. He's so close to dragging me down. I kind of want him to._

"Nothing much, just making out on the table...oh, where's that hand going..." Sebastian giggled. "Boring, really."

"Let me see that!" Jenson lunged forward and the boat grew unsteady with the sudden movement, almost sending the five of them headfirst into the lake. "Seb!"

Sebastian sat the camera in his lap. "Kidding!"

"You little shit!" Jenson lightly slapped Sebastian on the arm. "This is the time for serious recon. We're on a mission."

"Fine, fine, they were staring at each other like a pair of teenagers at the prom. I told you it was boring."

"In other words, what we've been seeing at home the past year." Lewis took a closer look, zooming in as much as possible with his phone. "Come on, guys, at least hold hands. Kimi, you wanna look?"

"Not really." Kimi pulled a piece of bread from a bag and tossed it to a duck swimming past. "Not worth looking yet."

"That, gentlemen," said Jenson, "is a man who knows he's got vodka and a girlfriend in his future."

"Eh, maybe. She was pretty." Kimi threw several smaller pieces to the group of fuzzy yellow ducklings swimming in a line behind their mother. "You never know."

"The Iceman abides," murmured Nico.

"Nico, it's the Dude abides. You watched that movie with me."

Sebastian picked up his camera again. "Jense?"

"Yeah?"

"You ever get the feeling those two speak a language we'll never understand?"

"All the time." Jenson placed his sunglasses on top of his head and refocused his camera. "Here comes the rest of our handiwork, boys! Champagne! Awwww, Fernando looks like he could just kiss him."

"If we're lucky he will." Sebastian took a quick succession of pictures. "I don't understand how the paparazzi follow us so often back home and manage to get decent shots. It's not easy."

"Not this early on," said Lewis. "Mark's not that kind of guy."

"I don't think so," added Nico. "Give it a few weeks."

"They know each other well." Kimi kept his back turned and watched a swan gliding past from a few feet away. "Will not be long. Seb, look."

Sebastian's eyes lit up while he took a picture of the graceful bird then got a close-up shot of its face. "Beautiful. Sometimes I miss doing that for a living, but then I wouldn't be here."

"Spying on your bosses with your best mates..." Jenson's voice faltered and he suddenly gasped. "They've just gotten their meals and had to stop holding hands across the table.  _On both sides._ The eagle has landed!"

Kimi pointed to the group of ducklings he'd seen earlier who had gotten out of the water and were waddling along the shore. "No, they have."

"And I missed it!" Sebastian placed his camera in his backpack. "What I get for swanning about..."

Everyone else groaned loudly and Nico mimed pushing Sebastian into the water.

"Okay, let's give them some privacy." Jenson picked up one of the oars while Kimi did the other and rowed them back to shore. "I think we can consider Phase One complete. Agreed?"

Everyone nodded. Minutes later, after they'd climbed out of the boat, Lewis's stomach rumbled loud enough for him to hear. "I think my appetite does too. All this watching people eat is making me hungry. What do we want?"

Sebastian was the first to speak, giving Kimi a look that managed to make even the Finn take a second to reply. "If you say ice cream again..."

"I had plenty, thank you. How about...Chinese?"

"Quick, delicious, and unhealthy." Jenson licked his lips. "Excellent."

"Why's it have to be quick?" Nico pulled out his phone and was already deep into a Google quest for a restaurant he thought would give them an experience half as nice as what they'd seen Mark and Fernando have. "We don't have anywhere to be."

"Phase Two." Sebastian and Jenson exchanged smirks. "They're having their Manhattan dinner date, but what's a trip to New York without a room with a view?"

 


End file.
